Archive for August, 2011

It’s hard to believe that it’s time for the students to come back. The slower pace of the summer will give way to the hustle of activity. But the new year brings new adventures.

This year the office will be sponsoring a move in program. Look for our student volunteers on Indian and State quad tomorrow (Thursday) and Colonial and Dutch on Friday. Both days between 10 am and 2 pm. They’ll be handing out compact florescent light bulbs and collecting cardboard boxes for recycling.

Later, the students will greet the new residents of the World of Environment and Sustainability living learning community as well as those living in the sustainability themed house in Colonial. Each of these areas received specialized recycling bins and sustainability council members will be giving mini lessons on recycling and changing out light bulbs.

As always, we’ll be present at Librarypalooza and the SA block party to greet all of our freshman. The first council meeting will be on September 9 at 3 pm in University Hall 306 for student who is interested in taking a leadership role in sustainability.

Faculty and staff, you can join our coordinators program if you would like to represent your department and become a point person for sustainability. Our first meeting will be September 6 at 12 pm in University Hall 306.

Remember creating those essays in school? Well, despite the quiet nature of the office during the summer, quite a few projects were completed. Three more hybrid buses were delivered in June. The summer routes ran completely on hybrid power!! What a great turnaround and accomplishment for our mass transit office and maintenance crew. We went from having a rather old, worn out fleet to one that is now one third hybrid. And more good things are to come!!

Another new development is the completion of our first renewable energy project on campus. Technicians installed a 49 kwh system on the roof of the solar science building. See the picture below:

We also completed the update of our web site. Check out: http://www.albany.edu/gogreen for our new look. There is lots of information and reference guides under our “Resources” and “Fliers and Handbooks” link.

We have started doing a comprehensive sustainability assessment called the STARS rating system. This is part of the national sustainability organization, AASHE, of which UAlbany is a member. Look for more info and updates on our progress as we map out all the sustainability programs, policies and initiatives.